Let us be clear: The contributors, editors, and publisher have notengaged in diagnosis of any public figures mentioned in the pagesthat follow. . .

[But get a load of the table of contents!]====

And he inspires all the best, uh, art.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/18/anarchists-unveil-naked-donald-trump-statues-in-several-u-s-cities/--------------These protesters wanted to humiliate ‘Emperor’ Trump. So they took off his clothes.By Peter HolleyAugust 19====

IT'S NEVER the wrongdoing — it's the lying about it. Pennsylvania AttorneyGeneral Kathleen Kane, who announced her resignation Tuesday in the faceof a possible 14-year sentence for her conviction on perjury charges,proves the truth of that adage for public corruption cases. Leakinggrand jury proceedings to embarrass a political rival would not havegotten her sent to prison. But lying about it under oath could and will. . .

To put it bluntly, the truth of testimony under oath is the singlemost important component of legal justice. Whether at trial or atdepositions, most factual statements most of the time are not easilyverifiable or disproved. Unless we can treat truth as the defaultoption, the entire justice system — civil as well as criminal — becomeslittle more than a charade.

For roughly 3,000 years, almost all legal systems — Babylonian, Roman,Jewish, Christian, Islamic, what have you — shared a single solutionto making people tell the truth: the oath. The idea is simple. Ifyou swear by a god or God you believe in, you won't lie — becauseyou'll be afraid of punishment.

In a world where it was and remains difficult to check veracity,the sincere oath is a spectacular ploy to ensure that justice is done.An oath-based system assumes that people lie frequently in daily life.But when it really matters that they tell the truth, they will tellthe truth, provided they are put under oath.

Sometime in the 17th or 18th century, the oath system began to breakdown, as more and more people stopped believing that God wouldpunish them for lying. Observers at the time noticed the change,and were profoundly worried about the consequences for justice.George Washington put it this way in his Farewell Address:"Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life,if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, whichare the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?". . .

Convicting liars of perjury and sentencing them to harsh prisonterms was the answer. It's a distant second best to divine enforcement.In fact, punishing perjury is simply the desperate attempt ofthe legal system to make do without religious faith. . .

[P]eople, including law enforcement officials, perjure themselvesanyway. One reason is that they know how hard it is to get caught.But more fundamental to the crime of perjury is that today,lying under oath may not feel very different from lying in ordinary life.

The eventuality that George Washington feared has come to pass.An oath no longer creates a sense of awe and terror for most people.

That's probably especially true for lawyers. . .

It's been a couple of hundred years since the legal system lost the"sense of religious obligation" that powered witness credibility.We're still limping along without a very satisfactory solution.====

> It's been a couple of hundred years since the legal system lost the> "sense of religious obligation" that powered witness credibility.> We're still limping along without a very satisfactory solution.

Assuming you're not in favor of a return to superstition, there'snothing for it but the solution (which is, indeed, the contemporarysolution -- the Bible is little more than a prop in a formalritual, these days) that Bertrand Russell once characterized:

---------------WOODROW WYATT: Well now, if you don't believe in religion,and you don't; and if you don't, on the whole,think much of the assorted rules thrown up bytaboo morality, do you believe in any system of ethics?

BERTRAND RUSSELL: Yes, but it's very difficult to separateethics altogether from politics. Ethics, it seemsto me, arises in this way: a man is inclined to dosomething which benefits him and harms his neighbor.Well, if it harms a good many of his neighbors, theywill combine together and say, "Look, we don't likethis sort of thing; we will see to it that it**doesn't** benefit the man." And that leadsto the criminal law. Which is perfectly rational:it's a method of harmonizing the general and privateinterest.

WYATT: But now, isn't it, though, rather inconvenientif everybody goes about with his own kind of privatesystem of ethics, instead of accepting a general one?

RUSSELL: It would be, if that were so, but in factthey're not so private as all that because, as I wassaying a moment ago, they get embodied in the criminallaw and, apart from the criminal law, in publicapproval and disapproval. People don't like toincur public disapproval, and in that way, theaccepted code of morality becomes a very potentthing.

So yeah, it's a cost/benefit analysis -- folks have to weightheir own perceived likelihood of getting caught againstthe likely criminal penalty plus their own sensitivity(which varies -- folks at one end of the sociopathicspectrum can be pretty shameless) to public humiliation.

> An oath no longer creates a sense of awe and terror for most people.

Except in historical drama and (speaking of horcruxes)fantasy literature. ;->

----------Thomas Cromwell: You wrote this book.

Sir Thomas More: I wrote no part of it. . .

Cromwell: Do you deny you instigated it?

More: It was from first to last the King's own project.

Cromwell: The King says not.

More; The King knows the truth of it. And whatever he mayhave said to you, he will not give evidence to support thisaccusation.

Cromwell: Why not?

More: Because evidence is given on oath, and he will notperjure himself. If you don't know that, then you don'tyet know him.

---

Meg: Father, "God more regards the thoughts of the heartthan the words of the mouth." -- well, so you've always told me.

Sir Thomas More: Yes.

Meg: Then say the words of the oath and in your heart think otherwise.

More: What is an oath then, but words we say to God?Listen, Meg. When a man takes an oath, he's holdinghis own self in his own hands -- like water.And if he opens his fingers **then**, he needn't hope tofind himself again. Some men aren't capable of this, but I'd beloath to think your father one of them.====

-- _A Man For All Seasons_

----------Then Fëanor swore a terrible oath. His seven sons leaptstraightway to his side and took the selfsame vow together,and red as blood shone their drawn swords in the glare of the torches.They swore an oath which none shall break, and none should take,by the name even of Ilúvatar, calling the Everlasting Darkupon them if they kept it not; and Manwë they named in witness,and Varda, and the hallowed mountain of Taniquetil, vowing topursue with vengeance and hatred to the ends of the World Vala,Demon, Elf or Man as yet unborn, or any creature, great or small,good or evil, that time should bring forth unto the end of days,whoso should hold or take or keep a Silmaril from their possession.

Thus spoke Maedhros and Maglor and Celegorm, Curufin and Caranthir,Amrod and Amras, princes of the Noldor; and many quailed to hearthe dread words. For so sworn, good or evil, an oath may not be broken,and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world's end.

-- J. R. R. Tolkien, _The Silmarillion_====

----------At Erech there stands yet a black stone that was brought, it was said,from Númenor by Isildur; and it was set upon a hill, and upon itthe King of the Mountains swore allegiance to him in the beginningof the realm of Gondor.

But when Sauron returned and grew in might again, Isildur summonedthe Men of the Mountains to fulfil their oath, and they would not:for they had worshipped Sauron in the Dark Years.

Then Isildur said to their king: "Thou shalt be the last king. Andif the West prove mightier than thy Black Master, this curse I layupon thee and thy folk: to rest never until your oath is fulfilled.For this war will last through years uncounted, and you shall besummoned once again ere the end."

---

Aragorn dismounted, and standing by the Stone he cried in a great voice:

'Oathbreakers, why have ye come?'

And a voice was heard out of the night that answered him, as if from far away:

'To fulfil our oath and have peace.'

Then Aragorn said: 'The hour is come at last. . . And when all this landis clean of the servants of Sauron, I will hold the oath fulfilled,and ye shall have peace and depart for ever. For I am Elessar,Isildur's heir of Gondor.'

I admit with shame that I had an initial guffaw at the naked Trump statues... but it didn't take long to feel uneasy and then gross and then frankly enraged about them. "Humiliating" Trump because he has an aging flabby body is hardly a relevant critique of him and policing unrealistic bodily norms through proliferating public Trump monuments seems damaging rather than liberating. I am disgusted by Trump's body shaming of other people, and I am disgusted by sexist attacks on HRC's appearance in particular... I don't think this is a matter of turnabout is fair play, I think it is about exacerbating an American disgust with the aging vulnerable "imperfect" body. This disgust is about self-hate and denial, and it is compensated by cruelty, conspicuous consumption, and acquiescence, all of which enable Trumpian politics. Leave it to anarchists to imagine it is some radical intervention to notice that boastfulness is an expression of insecurity rather than confidence and then use that commonplace to police body norms in ways that fuel fascism.